Reuters reported that the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has publicly expressed its intention to expand its wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot program, hoping to attract more banks to join and increase transaction volumes. The program is currently in its third phase, which started in December last year and was originally scheduled to end last month. However, SNB now claims that it will continue for at least two years.

The Swiss National Bank’s CBDC pilot project is still far from over

Antoine Martin, a member of the Board of Governors of the Swiss National Bank, said at the Point Zero Forum 2024 held in Zurich yesterday (3) that it would be open to expanding the coverage of its wholesale CBDC pilot program, aiming to attract more financial institutions to participate.

It is reported that the pilot program is called "Project Helvetia" and aims to issue real-time wholesale CBDC to support transaction settlement through SDX, the sister digital exchange of the Swiss Stock Exchange SIX. The specific process is as follows:

  • Phase 1: Launched in October 2019, mainly testing the real-time clearing and settlement system between SIX Bank and SDX (Phase 1 report)

  • Phase 2: Increase the participation of commercial banks, integrate wholesale CBDC into the core banking system, and conduct end-to-end transactions (Phase 2 report)

  • Phase 3: Moving wholesale CBDC activities from test environments to real-life environments

(The Swiss National Bank will launch a CBDC pilot, and wholesale CBDC is a real currency equivalent to bank reserves)

Among them, participants in the second phase include financial giants such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs; while the third phase will also include six financial institutions including UBS and Commerzbank.

As program participants, the relevant banks have issued six digital bonds through SDX, with a total settlement transaction value of CHF 750 million (approximately US$830 million).

In fact, Thomas Jordan, chairman of the Swiss National Bank, mentioned his openness to the CBDC pilot program at a press conference last month, saying that he intended to extend Project Helvetia, which was originally expected to end this month, for at least another two years.

Jordan emphasized at the time that the pilot program allowed SNB to play a "global leading role" in the process of deploying wholesale CBDC in real-world environments:

We hope that over time, more financial institutions will participate and use wholesale CBDC for a wider range of financial transactions.

SNB digital note issuance reaches $70 million

In addition, SNB also revealed at the press conference that the central bank had successfully started to issue one-week "central bank digital notes" on SDX last month, and the current issuance volume has reached 64 million Swiss francs (approximately US$71.6 million).

In the face of future expansion of the pilot program, SNB said it will continue to inform other financial institutions how to participate:

By continuing Project Helvetia, the Swiss National Bank is supporting innovation in the financial sector. The future success of the pilot program will depend on the inclusion of new financial market participants, an increase in trading volumes and the settlement of more financial market transactions on the platform.

(Will Switzerland be the next crypto mecca? The Distributed Ledger Act supports tokenized assets and Swiss franc stablecoins)

This article The Swiss National Bank’s CBDC pilot project enters the third phase: expanding the participation of financial institutions and extending it for another two years. First appeared on Chain News ABMedia.